A/N: Thank you to all the people who reviewed last chapter, it cheered me right up. And helped me 'pump it out' quick too! But this is where we say goodbye to Auron, alas. But who knows, the future is never certain until it becomes the past. ...which kinda sounds like something Auron would say, doesn't it?

Chapter Three

Dawn found her sitting on the deck of the airship, curled into a ball with her arms wrapped around her knees. She wasn't sure when they'd started, but the tears hadn't stopped. One after another rolled in boiling tracks down her cheeks. How could he lie to her like that? To everyone? She hadn't moved for hours, and even though she was being battered by the wind and she was freezing from the icy metal deck underneath her, the idea of going inside to four walls was unbearable. She'd lose her mind. When the sun rose and turned the clouds pink, the beauty of the whole thing was shattered, splintered into tiny rainbow fragments through the prism of her tears. She got up and ran to the edge of the deck, fully prepared to throw herself off the ship. Then she got there and found she couldn't even do that. Sighing, she sat down again, dangling her legs into thin air. "Pycdynt," she growled. Then the tears came again.

She didn't hear the door open again, but wasn't surprised when a warm red coat was wrapped around her shoulders and Auron sat next to her. Neither of them said anything for a while. Rikku felt…empty. Like she'd cried herself out. She'd even stopped blinking. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

She did not reply. "How long?" she asked after a while.

"Ten years."

"Yunalesca?"

"Yes."

Rikku had an urge to go kill the bitch all over again. "And after we…?"

"Yuna will Send me."

Another silence. "I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out. It's so obvious when you think about it."

"Oh?"

"I remember thinking, when we were sitting outside the Farplane, that your excuse for not going in was so pathetic. But you couldn't go in. That's why. And then, what Seymour said just after he proposed to Yunie. Then there's the fact that you never bleed. You hardly sleep. Or eat. And you're fucking invincible."

"I hadn't thought of it that way. You're the only one who worked it out, Rikku."

She tried to smile and preen a little. It didn't really work. "Evidence once again of my clearly superior intellect."

He tried and failed to laugh. "Tidus knows. I told him."

She sighed and put her head on his shoulder. She wasn't angry anymore. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Would you have understood? Most people think Unsent are dangerous."

"That's because of what Yevon tells them. Since when have I listened to Yevon? So why didn't you tell me?"

"At first…because I didn't want to face Yuna, and you two are so close… You have no idea how like her father she is. And I couldn't face that look she gets."

"You mean that pitying, compassionate one that you want to run away from? Yeah, I know that one. What happened then?"

"Then…I didn't want to hurt you."

"You didn't want to hurt me? Auron, this hurts more than it would have done if you'd told me."

He didn't know what to say to that. "I'm sorry."

"Don't say that. There's no point."

"Rikku, promise me something."

"No."

He blinked, surprised. "Why not?"

"Because I'm an Al Bhed. Promises are sacred to us. So if I promise, and it's stupid, then I'm bound to honour it anyway. So no promises for you, Mr. Grump."

He gave one of his half-smiles. "I suppose I can't ask you to do anything now." He did not complete the sentence. He did not need to. Not after what I have done.

His words brought back the silence. Rikku sighed. "If I'd known then maybe I wouldn't-"

"Wouldn't have what, Rikku?"

She met his gaze and shook her head slightly. "Don't you know?" She got up and took his coat off when he couldn't say anything. "I guess you don't." Blinking back a few more tears, she walked slowly away, wondering how you could have your heart broken without ever knowing you'd been in love. Utter despair. That was all she had now.

Suddenly rough, strong hands were grasping her shoulders and turning her around to face him. A finger lifted her chin, and surprisingly soft lips placed a tenderly gentle kiss on her mouth. She didn't move at first, still too stunned, but after a second, she kissed him back. Her slender arms came up around his neck as she pressed her lips a little harder against his, opening her soft mouth a little more, and gods, he tasted just like she knew he was going to – like sweet chilli with a spice that set her tongue tingling when it met his, and the background smokiness that was wholly addictive and then she knew what this feeling wedged into her heart was, now she understood. And it was so wonderful, and it blew her mind completely and her soul knew what heaven was. Euphoria joined the taste of Auron on her tongue, mixing and mingling with the bliss coursing through her.

When they broke apart they were both breathing hard. Rikku's eyes opened, eagerly seeking Auron's – but his copper orb was closed tightly as he buried his face in her silken fragrant hair. It did not smell like flowers, it was not even like strawberry, or the faint apple taste that her lush mouth carried and that now occupied his. Her skin and her hair carried gunpowder and hot metal and something that was completely Rikku. He wanted to engrain everything about this moment into his memory so it could be borne into eternity with him – the contrast her soft skin made against his rough hands, the soft, tiny sigh of happiness she gave, the shape of her body pressed to his so trustingly, like he could shelter it from anything. And he could be Sent now, and he'd fade happy.

But when he did pull back, as he knew he must, and when he did meet and was drowning in her eyes, the beautiful wholeness vanished, dazzled into obscurity by the garish glare of reality. They both had the same thought in one heart-shattering moment. This cannot be. So Rikku did what Auron could not bring himself to, and took a single step back. It broke him more thoroughly than Yunalesca had. For the first time in thirty years…he found himself running scared. But this was the Legendary Guardian, and he had no weaknesses. Except apparently Rikku had found an invisible chink in his otherwise impregnable armour. And she had driven her sword to his core. So the impulse to bolt simply became a turn away from her. He may as well have been on his knees before her, so complete was her victory.

Yet it was a victory in which both sides lost everything. And Rikku wanted to throw up from the bitter, vile taste it left in her mouth.

She did run.

And she didn't stop running. She ran every time he met her eyes, she ran when she slept at night, she ran when she stood her ground and fought against fiends, against Seymour, against Braska's Final Aeon, against Yu Yevon.

Then…there were no more places for her to run to. She hit a solid wall that malevolently slammed into her and broke her, mind, body and spirit.

When she looked back on it…she did not remember the Sending. She did not remember the words that might have been exchanged. A blank coma that she stood enshrouded in was what helped her through the next few days. Trauma, she guessed. Post Traumatic Shock or some such crap. It wasn't until Lulu had asked if she was alright – for once the enquiry had been about her not Yuna – that Rikku even realised.

"No, actually. I'm really not," she said. Her words were so simple, and her voice so sadly surprised, that Lulu felt a stab of worry for the girl she'd come to think of as her second younger sister. Rikku looked up. "He's gone, isn't he?" Lulu could not answer. "He was real, wasn't he, Lulu?"

Lulu nodded, tears forming in her own eyes as she reached out to stroke Rikku's hair. "Yes, Rikku. He was real."

She nodded as if to say I knew I was right. "Nobody dreamed him up then took him away." A pause while her envenomed triumph faded and real, absolute, crushing grief smashed her heart open. "He took himself away." Lulu said nothing else, and she didn't need to. Still mumbling that terrible revelation, Rikku got up and stumbled, falling into her bed while the ocean of tears and wracking sobs came to claim her.

A/N: Don't disappoint me now! Or I could just leave him dead... Think of poor Rikku's sobbing face before you skip over the review button.